


Catching the Stars With Their Tails

by Siavahda



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Canon Rewrite, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Happy, Happy Ending, Honor's Leash Snaps, Wish Fulfillment, Zuuluman was your warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9789974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siavahda/pseuds/Siavahda
Summary: A child’s Birthright Ceremony was nearly always held in the evening, but Dorothea had declared Daemon’s would be at noon.Did they think he hadn’t known what they would try, the moment the announcement of the time was in his hand?





	

**Author's Note:**

> The Black Jewels trilogy used to be my favourite books in all the world. Rereading them this year, I couldn't believe Saetan would have just walked away from Daemon and Lucivar. And it occurred to me that if he hadn't, pretty much everything would (or could) have been fixed: no Hayll means no threat to Chaillot, which means Alexandra's dreams don't summon Witch to be born there, for a start.
> 
> So this is what happened in a world where Saetan _didn't_ walk away.

“Paternity is denied.”

They watched him, the witches of the Hourglass, as Dorothea spoke the words to banish him. Three words they thought could break the bond between him and his son; little Daemon, still clutching his Red Jewel, the pride in his face faltering as he looked between the witches and the man.

A child’s Birthright Ceremony was nearly always held in the evening, but Dorothea had declared Daemon’s would be at noon.

Did they think he hadn’t known what they would try, the moment the announcement of the time was in his hand?

“You,” Saetan said softly, “are not his mother. Paternity is not for you to confirm _or_ deny, Dorothea.”  

The witches at her back started to shiver as the midday heat began to leech away, as their breaths curled and whorled in the suddenly chill air.

“Tersa is broken,” Dorothea snapped, unease sharpening her tone. “She couldn’t tell you what day it is, never mind who seeded her. As a witch of the Hourglass she is _my_ ward, and _I_ say that I had her serviced by my guards the moment you were gone. Any one of them could be the boy’s father.”

Saetan’s glazed, sleepy eyes looked pointedly at Daemon’s Red Jewel, a rare uncut gem. “When you asked me to sire a child specifically to bring a dark bloodline back into your inbred pedigrees?” he crooned. “Tell me, Dorothea. Which of your guards could have fathered a Red Jewelled Warlord Prince?”

Dorothea flushed. “Paternity is _denied!”_

Saetan ignored her, focusing instead on the quiet, bedraggled-looking witch who was a part of and yet apart from the rest of the coven. “Tersa?” Rising to the killing edge, sinking into the glorious Black, he still made of her name a gentle, silken caress. “Am I Daemon’s father?”

She looked puzzled. Dorothea looked furious. “I said—”

“Of course you are the boy’s father,” Tersa said, clearly confused. “Who else could it be? He is your mirror.” She patted her dark hair, tangled and wild. “You brushed my hair,” she added, a little sadly.

Saetan smiled. Cold. It was so cold. The sunlight glittered on the frost spiraling outwards from his feet. “I’ll brush it again for you, if you like.”

“That would be nice,” Tersa agreed.

He held out his hand. “Come with me, sweetheart,” he crooned. “Tersa. Daemon. You’re coming home with me.”

“You _can’t_ —guards!” Dorothea jabbed her finger at Daemon, her own Red Jewel blazing on its ring. “That boy belongs to the Hourglass! Hold him!”

Daemon ducked under a Warlord’s snatching arm; a burst of Red power flung the man back, and he bolted for his father.

With a shriek of rage, Dorothea flung her own power after the boy—and hit the Black shield that had sprung up around Daemon.

When she looked up into Saetan’s eyes, she flinched back.

“I’m going to give you one last chance to retreat gracefully,” the High Lord of Hell said quietly. As Daemon crossed the edge of the circle that had marked out his Birthright Ceremony, Saetan wrapped the shaking boy in his arms, enfolding him into the full might of the Black. “Have you ever heard of Zuuluman, Priestess?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She took another step away from him.

Saetan smiled, and the darkness in his eyes were windows into the Abyss. “Zuuluman is what happened the last time someone took one of my children away from me.”

She whimpered.

He looked to the mother of his son. “Tersa?”

“Yes.” She walked towards him. No one was foolish enough to stop her, not even when she paused to frown at Dorothea and shake her finger in the Priestess’ face. “Silly witch,” she scolded.

Dorothea hissed.

Tersa sniffed, and moved on to Saetan’s side. “I am ready now.”

“Good.” Saetan spared one last glance for Tereille’s High Priestess. “I’m going to take my family to Dhemlan Kaeleer,” he said softly, “and then I’m going to return for Lucivar. If you or anyone else had similar plans for my other son, I suggest you undo them. Quickly. Or Hayll—and any other Territory that raises a hand against my children—will learn the lesson Zuuluman learned.”

“I—I have to go.” She backed up still more, almost panting, unable to tear her eyes away from him.

“Yes,” he crooned, “I think you do.”

She ran, screeching for her guards to follow, as Saetan swept his family away.

*

Dorothea rode the Red Wind all the way to Luthvian’s home, but the Red did not blow fast enough.

By the time she arrived, Luthvian was hours gone, and Lucivar—in Prythian’s grasp, as they had planned, as they had planned for _years_ —had vanished.   

When night came—when Saetan returned to Tereille for the final time, Guardian and High Lord and Prince of the Darkness, the Black singing a witchsong of war and death—Dorothea was still on her way to Askavi, on her way to order Lucivar’s return.

Too late.

*

When dawn rose over Tereille the next morning, the mountains of Prythian’s Askavi were gone, crushed to dust, a plain the colour of bleached bone all that remained of the blasted, starved Territory.

Where Hayll had been there was only a crater, sunk miles deep into the earth, its borders immaculately cut to the lines on the map that had once marked out a Territory that no longer existed.

In the years after, the Territories and provinces that had fought against Dorothea’s taint were able to rally and grow strong, and stronger. Without the High Priestess to back them, Dorothea’s pet Queens throughout Tereille found themselves weakened, exiled, executed. Those who had served out of fear broke courts and built new ones, often with weaker-Jeweled Queens—the only ones who had survived in hiding from Dorothea—but truer ones, served by the Black Widows who had also come out of hiding; Black Widows who, in their tangled webs, were able to trace a path towards a better future.

It took generations, faster among the short-lived races than the long-. But eventually, Tereille became a place able to reclaim again its epithet as the Light Realm.

*

Saetan saw little of this, and cared less. In the decades to come, he would send books of the true Protocol to Tereille’s new courts; he would invite the Territory Queens of Kaeleer to open careful trade with their Tereillean cousins. But for the first few years after bringing Lucivar home, he looked only to the Shadow Realm, and raised his family.

He built a house for Tersa at the edge of Halaway, when she declined to live at the Hall. Sometimes she declined to live in Halaway, too, and disappeared to wander, but Saetan bought or built places for her to stay in every city, in every place he could reach, and it had to be enough.

When she was home, he brushed her hair for her.

His sons knew their older brothers, their long-dead cousin. They called Andulvar ‘uncle’, and he trained them with sticks and blades and battle-magic. Lucivar had an Eyrien legend instead of the brutal hunting camps to teach him how to be what he was, an Eyrien Warlord Prince who walked away from his Birthright Ceremony with an uncut Red.

There was no mother to deny paternity. Luthvian had vanished, and Saetan did not look for her. For giving their son to Prythian, he did not look. Manny, and Jo, he had brought to Kaeleer with Lucivar; their cottage was built right next to Tersa’s in Halaway. But the mother of his Eyrien son he never saw again.

But if Lucivar was all Eyrien, then Tersa had spoken true when she called Daemon his father’s mirror. There was power there, and pride, and the understanding that this one, like the High Lord, would someday wear the Black.

He taught them Protocol, and Craft. When puberty brought the snake-tooth sliding from its sheath under Daemon’s nail, the High Priest of the Hourglass taught his son the Black Widow’s craft, too. He read them stories and brought their toys to life with magic for their games; he brought them to Amdarh, to Dharo, to Scelt. He taught them to ride and bought them puppies, found them tutors and sent them to school. He welcomed their friends to the Hall and loved hearing those hallowed halls filled again with the sounds of children playing.

He taught them to dance at Winsol for the glory of Witch, taught them to serve and honour Dreams Made Flesh. He tucked them in at night with Cassandra’s promise to him: that She was coming, and when She did, they would be there to greet Her.

He saw Daemon fall in love with the dream, and didn’t try to stop him.

There was love and life and laughter, there was a Territory that saw his sons grow up and therefore did not fear them, not even when Daemon came away from the Offering with the Black, not even when Lucivar bore the Ebon-grey. There were courts that welcomed his sons, first in small, friendly Halaway, and later in Amdarh. No one was surprised that they grew into Warlord Princes to be proud of; no one was surprised that they made a formidable, unstoppable team together, far stronger in tandem than they ever were apart.

In time, Lucivar claimed Ebon Askavi. Daemon continued to serve, taking contracts in first one court and then another, never quite settling down, restless but patient. He turned his hand to business; Lucivar trained Eyriens, oversaw his people. Daemon was celibate, no matter how many Ladies sighed over his beautiful body; Lucivar courted, found love and lost it, sometimes bitterly, usually gently.

When the healing Tereille and wary Kaeleer began to forge bonds of connection, Daemon found his calling, going back to the Realm of his birth to bolster the Blood there. He funded courts and instructed Warlord Princes, gave Queens the benefit of his strength or his tangled webs. When new poisonous whispers stirred, he was the one to track them to their source and find and destroy, once and for all, rotting, scheming Hekatah, Saetan’s demon-dead ex-wife.

“Why do you care?” Lucivar asked once. “It’s not our Realm.”

“Every Realm should be ready for Witch when She comes,” Daemon said, and that was all.

*

So it went.

*

Until, centuries later—after Marian had come to Kaeleer through Daemon’s exchange program, and stayed; after a handful of Kaeleer Queens had gone to Tereille, and encouraged more to come—Saetan’s new love, Sylvia, the new Queen of Halloway, brought him home to meet her children.

“Hello, little ones,” he said, going down on one knee to greet them at their level. The boys bristled, wary of the new male, protective of the smaller, gold-haired female behind them. “I’m Saetan. May I have your names?”

“Beron, Mikal, you’re being _rude.”_ Their sister pushed her way past them and greeted Saetan with a smile.

The moment he saw her eyes, he _knew,_ and the world was still reeling as Witch touched her palms to his and said, “Hello, Saetan. I’m Jaenelle.”


End file.
